In Champagne the label tells you who made the wine. A récoltant-manipulant, marked RM on the label, makes Champagne only from grapes grown on its own vines; a négociant-manipulant, NM, buys grapes, musts or wines and makes Champagne on its own premises. The Comité Champagne counts 16,200 growers in the appellation; many sell their grapes to the houses or to a cooperative, and the ones who press, ferment and age their own wine are the subject of this page.
A grower's Champagne is a wine of place. With vines in one or two villages, the grower cannot blend away the character of a site the way a house blends across the region. Even a non-vintage cuvée built on reserve wines tastes of its village: Pinot Noir from the Montagne de Reims, Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs, Meunier in the western Marne Valley, Pinot Noir again in the Aube. Many of the growers on this page farm organically or biodynamically, use little dosage and give their wines long ageing on the lees before release. Every Champagne, from a house or a grower, spends at least 15 months in the cellar for a non-vintage wine and three years for a vintage, counted from bottling.
We draw up this list ourselves. The estates on it are the ones we regard as growers, whatever the two letters on their labels say. For the houses, see the grandes maisons; for the rank of the villages, the grand cru and premier cru pages.
The wines above are the grower Champagnes in the cellar. See all our Champagne or the new arrivals.
